Stop Building for Nuclear War! Green Jobs, Not Mean Jobs!

President Obama has called for a future free from nuclear weapons, but the fact is the budget for nuclear weapons is going to almost double over the next 10 years for a total of 85 billion dollars! The Kansas City Plant is one of three sites selected for "modernization", the other two being Los Alamos, New Mexico for plutonium pit production, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee for uranium production.

Nuclear weapons make us less safe. In January, 2010, a Scientific American article detailed the devastating results worldwide of even a limited nuclear war: a severe worldwide nuclear winter that would cause unprecedented starvation. Nuclear weapons, even if they are never used, drain our country of desperately needed financial resources, contaminate our environment into perpetuity, and sicken and kill thousands of nuclear workers. The production of nuclear weapons is poisoning us long after the Cold War ended!

The U.S. has over 5,000 active nuclear weapons and over 4,000 waiting for dismantlement, enough to destroy the world many times over. We do not need to build any new nukes!

Letter to

CEO, Zimmer Real Estate ServicesHugh Zimmer

Zimmer V.P., Director of Public Sector ConsultingTroy Nash

Mayor of Kansas City, MissouriMayor Sly James

and 6 others

RepresentativeEmanuel Cleaver

SenatorRoy Blunt

SenatorClaire McCaskill

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

President of the United States

We are deeply concerned that Kansas City, Missouri, has sold municipal bonds to secret investors who are building in Kansas City the first new U.S. nuclear bomb production plant in 32 years. The plant will make or procure 85% of the non-fissile parts for nuclear weapons, including the firing systems and guidance systems. The manipulation of a blighted-land designation for the new property and the secrecy shrouding the investors in this project constitute an abuse of democracy.

Our community needs real urban economic development, as does our country. This is what will bring us security. We could be investing in renewable green energy jobs, we could be investing in dismantlement and non-proliferation, we could be investing in clean-up of the current weapons plant in Kansas City. We do not want to be a city known for re-activating the arms race, which is likely if we start building new nuclear weapons. We want to be a leader in urban renewal through green jobs. We call on you to:

1. Revoke the bonds. Tell the developer CenterPoint Zimmer/ National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA, the federal agency responsible for making nuclear weapons) to stop construction until alternative jobs are developed.

2. Work with the Community Advisory Panel on a clean-up plan for the current KC Plant at the Bannister site and prevent waste material from the new site from being stored at the Bannister site. Enough is enough!

3. Demand that all charges be dropped for acts of conscience on city property regarding the nuclear weapons plant.

4. Invest in a real economic development plan through green-energy jobs.

5. Join with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is calling for a cut in nuclear weapons expansion in order to fund city needs and is calling for a world free of nuclear weapons by 2020.